When I paint a picture, my own feeling is that it is similar to an excavation process. When I paint the center of a picture, the colors for the other four corners have already been decided. It is also a work like grasping a vague memory in my hand. It seems contradictory, but surprisingly it is not so. Like digging in the earth, I add paint layer by layer as if scooping out water.

There are many thrilling experiences in the process of creation, such as a motif or a stain that is about to be erased creating an unexpected effect, or a phrase that jumps into your eyes or ears and leads you to the completion of the work. I value such “waste” and “noise”. The countless cracks and scratches that I intentionally create are one such example, and recently I have often attached foreign objects and ready-made items to my works. My theme for the future is to weave “trivial myths” through my works and exhibition spaces.

Nakagami Seisho (b. 1961) paints motifs of people and cats with a sense of life and rich gradation of light. What is the season captured on that screen? If it is a woman, I want to convey the beauty of the difference in age. If it is a cat, I want the viewer to feel the difference between a domestic cat and a stray cat in an instant. By capturing everything on the screen in color, the work appeals to the viewer’s imagination and expresses the color of light and even the scent of the wind, although in reality it only smells like an oil painting. Born left-handed, Seisho Nakagami was corrected to be right-handed in his childhood and painted with his right hand until his late twenties. However, when he encountered Klee’s words, “I will not paint with my right hand, which is stained with letters,” he tried painting with his left hand for the first time in his life, and found that it added nuance to his paintings and gave them more life. After that, I repea

I mainly create works using cats and people as motifs. I hope I could touch someone’s heartstrings by sublimating what I am attracted to and what I find fragile and beautiful into my works through my own filter.   Masaaki Hikita HP http://www.masaakihikida.com/